Tuesday a book about ESPN, called Those Guys Have All The Fun, was released to the public. Co-Author Jim Miller, who was granted access to ESPN’s Bristol headquarters to conduct interviews with company employees for the book, hit the promotional media trail the same day to encourage sales of his 763-page work.

Those Tuesday appearances included stops on the national ESPN radio shows Mike and Mike In The Morning, The Scott Van Pelt Show and The Doug Gottlieb Show.

Though the book includes a minumum of negative material involving anyone at ESPN not already known for notorious behavior, it may have come as a surprise to some that ESPN would promote even a quasi-controversial endeavor about the company to its national audience.

Though from what I was told this week about the circumstances of Miller’s radio appearances that day, ESPN management did everything in its power to control what was asked of the author by the hosts of the shows.

When Miller was booked on the shows two weeks ago, ESPN management took the highly unusual step of drawing up talking points, in the form of six questions, that it highly encouraged on-air hosts adhere to while interviewing Miller.

Along with those talking points, ESPN management asked some of those involved in each show to make sure the word “dominate” was not used while engaging Miller on the air.

Needless to say, some of those involved in each show weren’t exactly overjoyed at the idea. In the case of Van Pelt and Russillo, I was told they flatly refused to entertain ESPN management’s suggested questions.

Thursday I went back and listened to all three interviews, and what I heard did little to dispute the notion that ESPN management did in fact attempt to control what was asked of ESPN book author Miller.

The first question of each interview is particularly striking, considering it was the same query in all three cases.

To paraphrase, Miller was asked, “Why ESPN?”

From there, the interviews come off as - at best - perfunctory, with a noticeable lack of followup to Miller’s answers.

Miller was given a mere five minutes by Greenberg & Golic and Gottlieb while Miller’s audience with Van Pelt & Russillo lasted seven minutes.

None of that analysis is an indictment of any of those involved in the shows, on or off-air. If ESPN management saw fit to allow Miller to promote his book about ESPN over the company’s national radio airwaves, it had absolutely no business calling into question the professionalism of any of its on-air talent. (Which is what it did with the absurd talking points.)

If you ever wanted a material example of what monopoly wrought on an industry, the abject arrogance of ESPN executives in asserting editorial demands on its on-air talent is it.

UPDATE (4:42am PT): In lieu of the above revelation, a rather unfortunate quote from ESPN Network Senior VP/General Manager Mo Davenport from a post on radio-online.com this week touting the opening of the new ESPN radio studios on June 1:

Here’s my first SbB Powerless Rankings, which note the least influential prominent sports figures of the moment. The criteria is simple: The folks on the list would have no relevance if it weren’t for blind luck or undue support from their employers.

1 ) BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock: Most-despised man in sports, yet he has no power to do anything. Figurehead designed to distract fans from the actual, tiny cabal responsible for college football’s dark ages. Pie-in-the-face guy. Light a candle for him.

(‘Baghdad Bill’ Hancock)

2 ) Mike & Mike on ESPN Radio: Without relentless over-promotion by ESPN’s monopoly-enabled monolith, show wouldn’t exist. Perhaps the finest example of just how powerful ESPN has become as a sports marketing machine. Greenberg at least has a semblance of talent in a controlled setting - witness his SportsCenter performances.

3 ) The McCourts: The underfunded couple was handed the Dodgers by Bud Selig and MLB Owners to artificially limit payrolls in MLB’s larger markets and the NL West. Stole $120M from franchise to fund their personal lifestyles. Anonymous in L.A. outside the ownership suite - even despite the recent TMZ.com coverage.

4 ) Mark Cuban: Great at selling tickets and advertising but too enamored with his own, overrated basketball IQ. Needs to hire good basketball people and get out of the way. By alienating other owners and David Stern, doesn’t have nearly the influence in league matters that he should.

5 ) Jim Nantz: Rakes in millions in salary and perks from CBS gig, but would one less person watch a CBS sports telecast if he wasn’t calling the game? From local radio appearances, appears to have an interesting personality and provocative opinions, but once he’s national he goes dullard on us.

Those in the main sports media call today the slowest sports news day of the year - because of the lack of games. Not coincidentally, ESPN always holds its “ESPYs” on this day in L.A., while devoting its full day of radio programming to an on-air auction designed to raise money for the Jimmy V. Cancer Foundation.

(Sure hope winning bidder’s neighbors are similar humanitarians)

I missed those “ESPN experience” on-air auctions today, because I only listen to ESPN Radio during football season. (More specifically, when I’m prone over the urinal trough at USC home games.)

If you watch any sports television at all (and if you don’t, how did you end up on this site?) then you’ve seen the NutriSystem commercials featuring a bunch of aging fat sports figures like Dan Marino and Chris Berman (and Larry the Cable Guy?) talking about how it’s OK — and in fact delicious — for dudes to go on a diet.

One of the most prominent spokesmen for NutriSystem on commercials airing on ESPN is their very own Mike Golic, who claims to have lost 51 pounds. Well, TMZ recently caught up with Golic and his morning co-host Mike Greenberg outside of David Letterman’s studio.

As he was signing a few autographs (yes, people actually gathered on 53rd Street to get their autographs), Golic had a few words about NutriSystem that the company may not be all that pleased with…

This is not a good sign for the state of sports talk radio in Chicago. Dan McNeil, the TV/radio columnist for the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, says that the most recent Arbitron ratings show a disturbing trend: ESPN’s nationally-syndicated “Mike and Mike in the Morning” has become the top-rated sports talk show in Chicago. Not just in its time slot, but of any show - including the big-shot local guys. And McNeil isn’t happy:

They do a fine show, but it’s best consumed in markets such as Bangor, Maine, or Enid, Okla., or Salem, Ore. In big towns like ours, local sports talk never should lose to a more vanilla national show. Shame on all of us.

Readers in Bangor, Enid or Salem, please contact me to get his email address. For everyone else: isn’t this pretty sad? Friends in Chicago frequently complain about the lack of quality of their sports talk shows, and when one of the big drive-time shows has a segment called “Who Ya’ Crappin’?,” we’re hardly talking Peabody Award-winning work here.

While that’s some measure of trouble for Golic Jr., it could be really bad news for teammate Will Yeatman, who has played in all three games at tight end for the Fighting Irish this season. It turns out he was arrested in January for allegedly driving drunk on a campus sidewalk. As the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES notes, the charges were only dropped after he agreed to stay out of trouble for one year. Whoops.

• DEADSPIN hears Mike Greenberg lamenting the low-watt brain power of radio co-host Mike Golic: “It is impossible to have a conversation on a high, intellectual level with a man whose idea of fine literature begins with Doctor and ends with Seuss.”

Michael David Smith of FANHOUSE has the find of the day - the latest scene involving ESPN’s Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg on the soap opera “Guiding Light.”

The blimp and a wimp apparently are making recurring appearances on the show. And the image-conscious (really) Greenberg must be the only man in Hollywood upset that the writers settled their recent strike. Read more…

Weis: “I was both personally and professionally offended by her comments. And if the situation were reversed, and that were me saying them, two things would have happened. I would have been the lead story on SportsCenter, and I would have been fired.” Read more…

Michael David Smith of AOL Fanhouse watched Dana Jacobson’s return to ESPN’s morning show “First Take” and reports that she seemed slightly miffed at how her rant was reported. With the emphasis on slightly.

“I want to once again say how truly sorry I am for my poor choices and bad judgment,” Jacobson said. “I’ve taken responsibility for what I did say and do, and realize it was wrong. … I have already learned a lot.”

Although Jacobson didn’t get into the details of what she said at the roast, the way she emphasized the words “what I did say” seemed to be a subtle suggestion that some of the reports that have come out in the past two weeks overstated exactly what Jacobson said.Read more…